


Halo

by Pidonyx



Series: Ghosts [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Angst, Rated T for some gore, SO, Sorry if you wanted something else, There's not a happy ending, again it's a prequel, and because I wanted to flesh the story out more, and yes it's that AU again, btw the character death is temporary but not resolved in this fic, im making it a series, its a little more backstory for those of you that were curious, its a prequel to the first installment, mostly angst, sorry i guess, yet - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 21:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11677386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pidonyx/pseuds/Pidonyx
Summary: Angela Ziegler is dead. Fareeha Amari could not be saved.*There's a breaking point, when it comes to disasters. Up to that point, it can be stopped. But afterwards? One can only try to clean up the mess.





	Halo

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again!
> 
> Sorry to be back with more of this AU. It's.....niche, to say the least. My sister, though, was eager to spur me to write more on it, and there was some interest shown in this (and I, of course, wanted to write more lol), so......backstory! Here it is!
> 
> As always, comments, questions, critiques, and edits are welcome.
> 
> Title is from Halo by Depeche Mode (not Beyoncé, as my sister so very much enjoys joking about).

Angela's face is flushed, hair slightly mussed as she struggles to keep pace with Fareeha's longer strides. "Fareeha. Fareeha. FAREEHA."

Fareeha, with a sort of absentminded look in her eyes, is mumbling quietly to herself as she flips through two stacks of paper with the Overwatch and Blackwatch logos respectively emblazoned on the corners. She doesn't seem to hear Angela's progressively more frustrated iterations of her name, though she salutes -- on reflex -- when cadets and operatives in the corridors do so as they pass, oftentimes with a respectful "Strike Commander Amari," and a nod.

Forehead creased with exasperation, Angela reaches out and snags Fareeha's sleeve, bringing her to a fast halt and storming around to stand in front of her. Her black pumps make sharp clicking noises as she taps a foot, arms crossed. Fareeha raises her eyes from her papers, still looking as though her mind was back in her office.

Between trying to catch her breath and wiping a few stray beads of sweat from her forehead, Angela scowls, trying a different tact. "Strike Commander Amari."

Fareeha starts, the glazed look on her face disappearing. She blinks. She opens her mouth, hesitates, then tilts her head in confusion. "You never call me that."

She still seems a little disoriented, glancing around the wide hallway as if trying to regain her bearings.

Angela's eyebrows furrow again, this time in concern. "You weren't listening to me. I called your name twelve times."

Fareeha flinches. "Really? Sorry." Her face stretches into an abashed smile. "I'm listening now...?"

Angela feels herself soften against her will, though the burning fear that had propelled her to find Fareeha in the first place doesn't falter. In fact, it flares up further, like liquid mercury engulfing her lungs. She clenches her hands together, glancing over her shoulder. "'Reeha, there's --"

Right on cue, she's interrupted as a door behind Fareeha's shoulder swings suddenly and abruptly open, Director Petras stepping out and immediately garnering Fareeha's full attention. "Director," she says, hurrying to shake his hand. "I was not aware you were on base. Can I help you?"

Petras clasped her hand back with a smarmy grin. "Commander Amari, just the person I wanted to see. Do you have time for a meeting right now?"

Fareeha hesitates. "Oh, uh," She glances at Angela guiltily, but forces a public relations smile onto her face a second later. "Of course."

She mouths "sorry" over her shoulder as she leads the Director back towards her office, face such a mask of endearing concern that Angela can't help but smile, even though she's sweaty and scared and looks like a mess, and really, the information she has is something Fareeha should know right away. She gives her a little wave and turns, with really no choice but to go back to the medbay.

The door slides open with a sterile hiss when she swipes her ID over the pad, Athena's cool voice welcoming her as she steps over the threshold.

Still sitting on her desk where she abandoned it earlier that morning in her mad race to find Fareeha is a canister of the standard issue supplements every one of her patients takes. They vary slightly from agent to agent, but the baseline is vitamins and nutrients that they take daily.

Angela walks tiredly over to the desk and slumps over it, head in her hands. What had she been doing before she left in a hurry? Right -- inventory.

She moves over to where she stores the supplements, backtracking a few spaces to assure that she hadn't missed anything the first time. She talks quietly to herself as she works, writing details on the supply list in front of her. "Supplement bottle 32-74C. Half full. Will need replacing soon. Supplement bottle 32-75A. Enough left for two doses. Replace immediately." She continues down the row, filling in her chart, until she reaches the empty gap.

Her hands shake as she takes the bottle sitting on her desk -- and dumps it straight into the biohazard bin in the corner of the room.

She clears her throat, moving mechanically to mark the bottle on her list. "Supplement bottle 32-76B. Stocked. No need for refill."

*

It's not until a week later that Angela manages to catch Fareeha alone. Fareeha looks incredibly strained, but she smiles when she sees her. She seems about to speak, but Angela doesn't let her get that far, grabbing the front of her shirt and yanking her into an abandoned conference room.

Fareeha swallows visibly. "Well. That's a way to say hello."

Angela allows herself a tiny grin. "Sorry."

Fareeha reaches a hand behind her to turn the lock on the door, her other arm tugging Angela closer.

Angela lets her pull her in for a short, sweet kiss, indulges herself after a stressful week by giving herself a moment to enjoy it, before pulling away and turning to more serious matters.

Fareeha, of course, recognizes the shift as it happens and reacts accordingly, leaning back against the door to give Angela space and cocking her head attentively. "Now. What was so urgent -- _khara_ , it's been a week, hasn't it?"

Angela smiles wryly. "Yes, but even that's an improvement. Last time you were swamped with work I didn't see you for a month."

Fareeha sighs, pushing a hand into her hair. Grey is starting to appear, thick streaks of platinum breaking up her natural color. Angela quietly wonders to herself where the time went. "Sorry."

Angela leans against her, resting her head against Fareeha's shoulder. "Don't be. 'Reeha, there's something you have to know."

Bringing up the topic she's turned over in her mind for countless hours over the past week causes a spike of fear that makes her heart jump slightly against her ribcage. Fareeha's hands rest gently against her back, touch tentative and delicate, and she sucks in a long breath, trying to steady herself. Fareeha's voice is soft, reassuring. "I'm listening."

Angela glances towards the corners of the room, eyes darting to all the spaces a bug could be hidden. She can't trust appearances anymore. Leaning up so her lips just brush Fareeha's ear, she speaks as softly as possible.

"Fareeha. I'm almost certain you're in danger. That Overwatch is in danger."

Fareeha, picking up on what she's doing, tilts her head so a curtain of hair falls over her cheek, hiding her mouth from view. She breathes softly back, "How do you know?"

Angela's hand, clenched at her side, spasms tighter. "In your daily supplements. I found a substance I don't recognize. It's not on the list. Officially, it's not supposed to be there. I do think it's some sort of tranquilizer, or narcotic."

"And how do you know that it wasn't an isolated incident?"

Angela breathes out a heavy breath. "I don't."

Fareeha exhales softly. "Alright then. I'll look into it. But I don't want to cause a panic if there's nothing to actually worry about."

Angela feels a spike of panic shoot through her chest. Tone growing more agitated, she stands further on her tiptoes, struggling to keep her voice low. "Fareeha Amari, if you alert whoever has done this to the fact that you know, you could die. If you put yourself in danger I will kill you \-- if this mysterious entity does not do so first. Is that clear?"

"I read you," Fareeha says, tone serious. Angela bristles slightly, feeling as though perhaps there's a hint of amusement in her tone as well, before deciding that it's best to just drop it. She slumps back down against Fareeha's chest.

"I'm serious. Don't die. I can't bring you back yet."

This time, Angela does hear a little amusement in Fareeha's voice, her hand settling at the base of her skull, tangling in her hair. "I won't, _habibti_. I promise."

Fareeha's breath tickles her ear again briefly. "But try to relax just a little. Please? At least until we know if it's serious or not. You never get enough rest."

"Alright. Be careful, _schatz_. I'm going to hold you to that promise."

*

Angela's lungs burn as she pelts through the winding labyrinth of Watchpoint Zurich. She's gasping for breath, her feet are shooting with pain in every step, and somewhere along the way she broke a heel. The jagged sole digs into her skin and the height difference means she's limping, but she runs anyways. Her pulse thunders in her ears. She knows she must look like a madwoman, but still, she doesn't stop.

Thoughts jumble in her head like a hurricane, but two stand clear and white hot in the eye of the storm:

_Find Fareeha. Get out._

They know, she thinks desperately to herself. They know.

In the weeks following their meet-up, Angela had checked in with Fareeha as often as she could, trying to pretend she wasn't growing more paranoid by the day, with little avail. Trying to run Overwatch and its covert ops division simultaneously was hard enough without an added stealthy investigation, and Fareeha, as a result, was making very little headway.

Especially with those meetings with Director Petras every day, Angela's mind reminds her mercilessly. You should have noticed that sooner. It will be your fault if something goes wrong.

Angela curses breathlessly, turning another corner identical to the previous one. She should have noticed earlier. But she hadn't. She'd only noticed a mere fifteen minutes before, her paranoia driving her to test every supplement bottle in a brand-new search for the substance -- which, under further study, she had realized was indeed a sort of suppressor -- she'd found in Fareeha's. She had come up empty-handed in all except for one: her own.

The memory alone sends a sharp shiver of cold down her spine. Whether it was intended to be found or not, it's a warning. They know she found them out. And "they", of course, is the UN. Or at least part of it. Angela had been manipulated like a puppet, administering a suppressor to the Strike Commander herself -- or, to think in worse terms, she had been unknowingly giving a suppressor to her _partner._ Angela's stomach twists. She has no idea how long she had been doing that, blindly, before accidentally stumbling upon the foreign serum.

In any case, the message is clear: the UN has no more use for Overwatch, and Fareeha and Angela are in great, great danger.

_Find Fareeha. Get out._

Finally, chest heaving, Angela stumbles into the center of the Watchpoint, where the smaller corridors expand into a huge room with a high, domed ceiling and memorials running around the inner walls. Her heart leaps in relief when she sees Fareeha waiting in the center, just as she had asked her to in a rushed, vague phone call fifteen minutes prior.

She doesn't stop running until she almost mows Fareeha over, hands catching on the lapels of her partner's overcoat, near doubled-over with fatigue. Fareeha steadies her as she tries to catch her breath, gasping between great gulps of air. "Fareeha -- we have to leave. Now."

"What?"

"Fareeha, it's them -- the UN -- they tricked me into giving you the suppressor, they're manipulating you -- I don't know what they're going to do but I know that if we stay here, we could die. We have to go. Now."

"The UN?"

Angela, finally able to draw air in a semi-normal breathing pattern, sways upright, looking Fareeha in the face. Her partner's face holds casual interest, but nothing to indicate that she understands the gravity of the situation. There's a slight glaze to her eyes, and Angela's heart plummets. They got to her first.

"Yes. The UN. Please, please, Fareeha. We have to go."

"Angela, the UN wouldn't do that. They know we are assets. Overwatch is a global power. There is no reason to believe that they would do anything to endanger their agents. It's okay."

Fareeha's soothing tone is not unexpected, given what Angela suspects the UN has continued to give her, out from under Angela's watchful eye, but it's still abrasive, and her temper flares.

She jerks out of Fareeha's range of touch, away from the hand that is moving towards her in a manner that reminds her of the way one might calm a child after a nightmare. "No. You're wrong."

She bites her tongue, tips of her ears burning at how childish that had sounded. Fareeha's face is still a smooth mask of mild concern, eyebrows furrowed ever-so-slightly.

Angela almost thinks she can physically feel their time ticking down. Like there's a giant clock, each tick reverberating in her skull as the numbers dwindle. Sharply, she grabs Fareeha's shoulders, shaking her. "Don't you understand?" She's not being rational. She's too terrified for that. "Fareeha, we are going to **die**."

Her voice rises to a shriek, and somewhere in the back of her mind, the logical part of her quietly notes its gratitude that there is somehow no one else in the cavernous room with them, but it's overshadowed by the wave of hysteria crashing over her.

Fareeha is silent, and Angela snarls in frustration, spiraling more out of control every second. "I --"

Then the world shatters into a million pieces. For a split second, Angela sees Fareeha suspended in midair, silhouetted by a great light behind her, watches as shrapnel flies, catching her across the face. She feels a sharp sting in her own skin, but white is bleeding across her vision, and everything is gone.

*

The first thing Angela senses other than a blurry mix of white and pale grey is a ringing in her ears. She tries to feel something. She can't move. Can't hear.

She blinks. Slowly. She starts to realize that she can feel her limbs, and everything hurts. She waits a moment. Can she move now? She tries, shifting slightly. She raises her head, regretting it instantly when it spins with the fervor of a tilt-a-whirl.

She slowly regains her senses. She can feel pain. She licks her lips, and tastes blood. More pain, there's a cut on her lip. She lifts a hand, feeling as though it's weighted with rocks. Another slice across her nose and cheek. The medical doctor in her thinks that it's lucky it missed her eye. Though at the moment, she still can't see anything other than undefined shapes.

She can feel that she's lying on something hard. Under the ringing in her ears -- which has subsided slightly -- she can hear the creaking and groaning of metal and concrete, and the faint crackle of flames.

Something blew up.

 _Fareeha_.

Angela blinks hard, trying to see. Her vision clears into lucid shapes, and she can see that she's curled in a small alcove where two slabs of stone had fallen and braced each other up. By some miracle, she's alive, though every muscle hurts from where she was thrown to the floor, and she has stinging cuts all over from flying shrapnel -- though none seem to be as big as the ones slashed through her face.

She pushes herself to her feet, ignorant of the pain, and how she sways as she stands. A trickle of blood slides down her cheek, but she doesn't reach up to brush it away, scrambling up and over the lip of rubble surrounding the hole she woke up in.

Her wrecked heels prove useless, so she ditches them, ignoring the sharpness of the rocks she is climbing over in favor of a much more pressing issue: finding Fareeha.

For the second time that day, Angela is on a mission to find her partner, a kind of numbness soaking through her body as she searches, making her unfeeling of rocks embedding themselves in her palms, of the pain of walking, of everything except for her goal.

Her eyes see her before her mind catches up, and she's already moving when she realizes what she's doing.

Angela falls to her knees, skidding the last few inches and tearing her knees open on the rocks. Fareeha is half-buried under rubble, face-down in the dust.

Angela frantically digs, pulling until Fareeha is lying on her back in the open air, and she sees it.

Where the shrapnel hit her is a bright, bleeding wound, and through her chest, twisting the ribs in a way Angela knows isn't survivable, is a wickedly sharp piece of steel. Blood, dark and wet, has stained her coat to the point where it's unrecognizable, pooling underneath her body. Around the exit point, Angela thinks she can see a pearly shimmer of bone, and the red squish of organs. Despite her years of medical expertise, Angela's guts twist violently, and she dry heaves into the rocks for a minute before her stomach settles.

Despite what her brain is obviously telling her, what she knows, Angela reaches out, grasping Fareeha's chin. "Come on. Fareeha. Wake up."

Her voice is raspy and hoarse, and she thinks she might be sick again. Naturally, Fareeha doesn't answer.

Because Fareeha is dead.

As immediately as the thought comes to her, she rejects it, unable to comprehend, unable to cope.

Her body is moving ahead of her mind again, moving as fast as she can in the direction of where her lab used to be. When her brain catches up, she moves even faster. Through the haze of everything that had happened, whether rational or not, a thought had surfaced. A miracle. Nanobots.

Logic is screaming at her to stop as she reaches the spot, throwing chunks of rock aside, ripping her skin open in her search. She unearths the staff first, dinged up in certain places but -- somehow, mercifully -- whole. Then she finds the vial, full of an ethereal golden-yellow gaseous, liquid substance, labeled in her own hand "Experimental -- Do Not Use". Her handwriting seems alien to her, in light of her world being flipped upside down, but she doesn't dwell, already hauling herself up and spinning back the way she had come.

Flinging herself back down next to Fareeha's prone body, she sets aside the staff and vial. Angela ignores the dirt and rubble embedded in her hands and under her nails, setting to work removing the steel that had shoved aside Fareeha's stomach and lungs. Surgical expertise argued that the removal of the metal would damage her body even more, that the people at the morgue would remove it -- but Angela cuts that thought off as well, logically, rationally -- because that is what she is operating on now, of course, logic -- Fareeha can't live with a large piece of metal stuck in her. No. Of course not.

Once the metal, bloodied and savagely sharp, is out, Angela flings it over her shoulder, snatching up the staff and popping open the place for the canister -- she hasn't figured out how to have the staff self-manufacture the nanobots but she will, once Fareeha is better, when everything is normal again. It will work properly this time. It will. It has to. She shoves the vial into place, latching it closed and holding the staff in her palms, feeling it vibrate, praying to any deity that can hear.

She takes a deep breath, squeezing her eyes shut and raising the staff above her head. Please.

Angela brings the staff down in a swift arc over Fareeha's chest, the head flaring open with a bright, golden light right over her heart.

" _Helden Sterben Nicht_!"

The words fall from her lips like a desperate plea, as if saying the words could make it true. But when she opens her eyes, light fading, all hope Angela had had evaporates. Fareeha still lies, unmoving, not stirring as Angela places a hand on her cheek.

Her last hope is gone. The miracle she needed most was one she could not perform.

The dam breaks, and Angela collapses across Fareeha's chest, the warmth already fading, sobbing brokenly. Fareeha is gone. She isn't coming back. Angela has failed, and now she is alone.

That thought alone is even more frightening than the knowledge of the UN's corruption. Now Angela has to face a world that has changed forever, and she has to do it by herself.

Grief overwhelming her, Angela huddles with her face hidden from the sky, surrounded by the rubble and dirt that had been the once-proud Watchpoint Zurich. She can't think, can't breathe. It's her fault. It's her fault.

Barely drawing breath, Angela stays frozen there until she can no longer ignore the part of her brain screaming at her to move. She can't stay here. The UN had most likely intended for her to die in that explosion. She has to leave.

She can't look at Fareeha's body, the threat of losing herself completely too high. Her legs shake as she stands, her whole body shuddering. In a split-second decision, Angela ducks down, yanking Fareeha's dog tags from her neck and pausing only to press her lips to her forehead. Then, she runs.

*

With the chain of Fareeha's tags wrapped tightly around her hand, Angela heads for the woods around the former base. She coughs against the dust and smoke but doesn't let herself rest, does not stumble.

Once in the relative safety of the trees, Angela skirts back towards where she knows a safehouse is. In case of an emergency like this, she thinks wryly. She won't be able to stay long. If They don't think she's dead, it will be one of the first places They will look. Still, she should have ample time to gather supplies, pull herself together, to disappear.

Her grief is a dull presence in the back of her mind, and she can already feel a headache building behind her eyes. The air whipping past her face rips at the open wounds on her skin, and she realizes as she tries to draw breath that her ribs might be broken. Her all-consuming need to find Fareeha earlier had made her pain more ignorable, but the full strength of it becomes apparent as she makes her escape, and she falters slightly in her run.

Eventually, coughing, trying not to breathe too deeply, she reaches the safehouse, an unassuming sheet metal door in the side of a warehouse that could've led anywhere except for the the almost invisible panel built into the wall next to it.

On reflex, Angela reaches for her ID, surprised to find that it is in fact still clipped in its usual spot on her chest, clinging to the tattered and charred remains of her lab coat.

She swipes it and falls into the darkened safehouse, relieved as the door swings shut and bright fluorescents illuminate a spartan room, furnished with a cot, supplies stacked in the corner, and a pile of crates no doubt stocked with emergency weapons and ammunition.

First things first. Angela makes an immediate beeline for a shower, built into the wall and separated from the rest of the room by only a plastic sheet, but more welcoming at the moment than a luxury suite. Mostly because at the moment, a luxury suite was likely to be a trap. She lets herself enjoy the indulgence of a warm shower for only a few moments before quickly cleaning herself up, carefully washing out the shallow cuts all over her arms, legs, and face, and biting down to keep from making a noise as she cleans out the stinging lacerations across her nose and mouth.

As soon as she is showered, she heads for the supply rations, loathe to put her shredded and bloodied clothes back on her body. She finds, with a little digging, a pair of khaki pants that will work well enough, at least until she can get something better, and a black shirt, tugging them on and tucking the pants into a pair of combat boots she unearthed from another box. She hesitates, then fishes Fareeha's dog tags from the pile of ruined clothes by the shower, slinging them around her neck and tucking the chain under her shirt, where it sits like a physical representation of the cold void she feels opening in her chest.

Satisfied for now with just being clothed, she searches for what she really needs: medical supplies.

Her labor is rewarded when she pries open a box to find it fully stocked with first aid materials. Getting down to business, Angela sifts through for a bottle of sanitizing solution, cleaning her hands and threading a needle with dissolving thread. She stuffs a cloth in her mouth and goes to work stitching her face closed, biting down on the cloth when needed. It's routine, familiar and reflexive, and falling into it is more comforting than anything else.

She seals her neat, even stitches with butterfly bindings, wrapping the bloodied needle with a sanitizing wipe and tucking it back inside the first aid kit.

Satisfied with her work, she cleans her hands with another wipe -- fervently wishing the small safehouse had a biohazard bin. She settles for tossing it in a small garbage bin in the corner.

Angela knows she should vacate the premises as soon as possible, but she's so exhausted from the emotional and physical strain of the day that she allows herself to crawl into the cot. She's asleep in minutes.

When Angela wakes, the safehouse looks the same as ever, but she knows from her finely-tuned inner clock that a few hours has passed.

She swings herself out of the cot, briskly packing all the medical supplies she deems essential into the only satchels the safehouse has in supply: smaller-sized bags meant to strap to a thigh or hip but not really meant for carrying permanent luggage. Once she's gathered rations as well, she feels as though she's a walking baggage cart. It will just have to do for now.

Angela rummages through the emergency weapons supply, pushing aside heavier and larger rifles and guns to find a semi-automatic pistol, pleased to a degree with the one she finds. At least to protect herself with until she can find a replacement. She'd have to replace most of what she'd found, actually -- the stores of the safehouse were meant to be temporary, in case of an emergency, not toted around as long-term supplies.

Angela straightens the room as much as possible in a weak attempt to hide her trail -- she doesn't expect it to work, of course, but all due precaution -- and only gives it a moment's once-over before pushing open the door and vanishing into the night.

*

Angela's first raid on an Overwatch base -- or, as she should say, a former Overwatch base, with the international crackdown following the explosion and deaths of Overwatch's Strike Commander and Head Medical Director and the enactment of the Petras Act -- goes about as badly as it could possibly have gone. She escapes with better supplies and some tactical gear, but with some of her sutures torn and with a new bleeding bullet wound in her side.

She still considers herself lucky, as she extracts the offending metal and re-stitches the still-healing gashes. With how underprepared and under-equipped she was, she could have been killed. Instead, she escaped with a few flesh wounds -- simple to fix.

Her next raid goes far more successfully, with her newly-gained gear and better understanding of the guard systems being used. She slips into the Watchpoint like a shadow, avoiding a scuffle altogether by avoiding cameras, security officers, and staying in the darkest areas of the hallways. She's infinitely grateful for her new black armored vest, gloves and leggings -- graciously donated by the personal wardrobe of some ex-agent at the previous Watchpoint. Her face still feels extremely exposed, both by the possibility of recognition and the fact that her fair skin probably stood out like a splash of white paint against the darkness around her.

Her goal for this raid is to find a new weapon -- the standard-issue pistol she picked up at the safehouse is passable, but she needs significantly more firepower if she wants to raid more watchpoints after this one. And she does. Any other supplies she picks up on the way will just be additional benefits.

Finally, after carefully picking her way down what feels like every corridor in the damn place, she reaches the arsenal. Which is, as expected, locked tight. While she would really rather not use her ID, as it stamps a digital footprint she's hesitant to leave, Angela is poorly armed and alone, and it's the quickest way to bypass the security systems. Thankfully, the computer accepts the card when she swipes it -- that was a potential obstacle Angela had highly preferred avoiding altogether.

She slips into the arsenal, wasting no time in methodically sweeping the entire stock. She finds a much more powerful and enhanced pistol in efficient time and switches it with hers, strapping it to the thigh holster on her right leg and leaving the standard-issue pistol in its place.

She leaves the arsenal as silently as she came, ducking down the hallway like a ghost. Using the same method of carefully tracking cameras and guards, she makes her way down to what had been the agents' personal barracks.

She's noticed that agents, regardless of whether or not they really were a selfish person at heart, tended to keep the best supplies for themselves, in the form of personal belongings they favored, and she is not disappointed as she searches through the items of clothing and gear left behind.

From one trunk she acquires a pair of armored boots, sturdier than the ones she got from the safehouse. From another, a much larger and higher quality satchel that she swaps with the weaker one strapped to her left thigh, clicking the riveted leather belt also in the bottom of the trunk around her waist.

She considers her job in this area of base done when a jacket hanging by the door catches her eye -- really for no particular reason. She hesitates by the exit for a minute, picking up the jacket from its hook and examining it in the dim light.

It's heavy -- thick, high quality leather, made for long-term use, and warmly colored in russet and cream. She notices a pair of folded wings engraved in the back and rubs a thumb over the design. A memory of Fareeha, beaming at her as she tucks her own coat over Angela's shoulders, comes unbidden to the forefront of her mind _\-- they are both soaking wet from the rain, the overcoat included, but it insulates well, and Angela feels warmer already; not just from the layers of leather she's clasping around her. "Won't you be cold?"_

_"Of course not. You can keep me warm."_

_"Really? You're actually going with that?"_

_Fareeha's grin is as brilliant as the sun. "Naturally."_

For no reason she can really explain, she pulls it on, zipping it up and buckling the strap at the bottom, running a hand down it to smooth the worn leather before leaving the room.

Her last stop is in the medical labs, where medical professionals working under her -- and perhaps Angela herself, if she had been in location on that base -- worked and kept their medical supplies, as well as where they developed new technology. It was connected to the science labs so that the scientists and doctors could share research. A bittersweet smile tugs the corner of Angela's mouth upward. She breezes through the room, taking basic first aid supplies, extra materials she considers essential (which, unfortunately, is a lot), and tucking extra bottles of painkillers into her thigh and hip bags.

She almost walks straight past the experimental projects, her own failure on that front still fresh and raw in her mind, but stops herself when she notices what is on the forefront of the table. She touches a finger to the sleek steel cap of the biotic canister -- a design she has come up with herself, passed on for other watchpoints to prototype and manufacture.

Her mind is saying that it's not worth the risk of failure if the biotic canister doesn't function properly -- but something in her gut is telling her to take it, take as many as she can. She listens to the second impulse, reasoning that there wouldn't be so many if the project hadn't evolved past the prototype stage. And then there was the added bonus of perhaps being able to make her own when she ran out -- she understood the design inside and out. She tucks as many as she can carry into her bags, straps more to her belt, and then even more to the leather band around her arm.

Spurred by this first potential success, Angela searches through the rest of the experimental projects, finding nothing of interest until she gets back to where the science labs and medical labs start to converge.

There's a visor on the sleek lab table, something she remembers some of the more junior doctors at this base calling her for advice on. From what she recalls, it's a collaboration between the more technology-driven science labs and the biology experts in the med labs. Hesitating only slightly, Angela picks it up, marveling at the mechanisms and sensors built in. She dithers for a brief moment before sliding it on, surprised at the elegance with which the visor connects to her nerve endings. She clasps it against her head, making up her mind to take it with her.

And it turns out to be an excellent decision when Angela is leaving the base.

She makes it halfway back through the winding corridors, using her method of avoidance and camouflage, when she's attacked. Apparently, she wasn't quite subtle enough. As the adrenaline kicks in, the visor suddenly comes to life. The connections between the visor and Angela's brain buzz, and there's a feeling like all her nerves had been doused in iodine. The visor highlights sensitivity points on her targets, and with the medical enhancements Angela dodges bullets, performs combat rolls she never thought she would have any use for outside of training, and with her new sidearm sends her own ammunition tearing through center mass.

The fight is a short, rather clean one, and before long, Angela is surrounded by dispatched enemies, panting slightly -- though not as much as one would think, given the sheer number of adversaries, Angela's career as a field medic rather than a full-out soldier, and, if she's being honest, her own age. She thanks her lucky stars and the medical miracles of the former Watchpoint doctors for getting through that scuffle unscathed, and then books it for the exit, making no effort to be quiet or avoid the cameras this time. Not only do the guards already know she's on base, but her face is now covered -- her identity safe.

No one follows her as she pelts out into the darkened woods. And no one notices when she glides through the nearby town like a phantom.

*

Angela has been on her own for three months, twenty-two days, and seven hours when she first hears her own name on the news.

She's tucked into the corner of a slightly dirty pub in London of all places -- one that has surely seen stranger things than a woman who refuses to remove her facial covering -- and her head snaps up before she can check herself. Immediately she winces, berating herself for doing anything that could draw more attention than she already garnered. Quietly assuring that no one paid any mind, she turns her attention to the screen of one of the televisions -- no doubt used for displaying sports on such nights -- in time to catch the tail end of a newscast on the funerals of Overwatch's Strike Commander and Head Medic. It doesn't surprise her when it leads directly into a report on the state of Overwatch's shutdown; she'd expected the UN to tie up their loose ends as quickly as possible once she and Fareeha had been eliminated, and the first reports on such actions had started to come in a mere week after the explosion and a whole ten days before the official funerals related to the incident had taken place.

What does surprise her though, is the story that comes right afterwards, shaking Angela out of the bored stupor she had fallen into, eyes watching the program but not really seeing. What caught her attention was a joint report on vigilante activity -- with pictures of Angela in full tactical regalia from all of her Watchpoint raids of the past few months, including the very first one, splashed across the screen. A particular photo of her catching a guard across the face with the butt of her pistol is the largest one, and Angela shrinks a little in her seat, praying no one in the pub connects the woman seated in the back with the woman on the television screen. Mixed in with photographs of Angela are a few of another figure. These are much fewer and farther between, as well as blurrier -- apparently this other person is better at avoiding cameras than Angela -- but Angela can make out broad shoulders, power coiling in the other vigilante's crouched position, a hood concealing much of the figure's head, and in the last photo, what looks like a heavily carved wooden mask (though most likely it is some kind of wood alloy, for strength) as the figure looks towards the person taking the photograph. Angela's curiosity peaks, but in a blink, the photos vanish as the program cuts to the reporter.

Angela strains to hear over the chatter of the pub, managing to catch a few snatches of information. She ferrets them away for later, instinct and habit already building a repertoire of "Potentially Useful Information" a mere three months into her...work -- if you could call it that -- as a vigilante (if you could call it that either). She learns that the other vigilante is calling themselves -- or is being called by the media -- Horus, that they are elusive, that there are strange whispers of possibly supernatural powers about them, and that they, too, have been raiding Overwatch bases. For information, Angela assumes, the very same as her -- once she'd no longer needed to raid for supplies, she had taken it upon herself to tear every system apart that she had to until revenge was dealt, corruption rooted out, peace found, whichever came first.

All thoughts of this "Horus" are torn from her mind, though, when her picture flashes on the screen again, this time with a name. Sigrún.

Sigrún. A Valkyrie. Fitting enough, she supposes. And though it's merely a name likely given by some bored intern at the broadcasting station, there's something about it that gives Angela pause. She hadn't considered taking a different name -- it never occurred to her that anyone would even notice her. But now she does, and the idea seems almost appealing. Logical.

Angela Ziegler is dead. Fareeha Amari could not be saved. Angela Ziegler can not exist anymore -- there is nothing and no one that needs her, not with the gaping wound in her heart she still nurses, not with the danger that comes with the knowledge she possesses. Not when Angela Ziegler is so terrible, guilty, and dangerous a thing to be.

Sigrún though. She is only known by a fresh reputation. She is dangerous in a different way. She can face the broken and flipped new world in a way that Angela Ziegler cannot.

Sigrún can make all of those who are at fault absolutely beg for Mercy.


End file.
